Once You've had Mecha
by Matrix Refugee
Summary: ...you'll never want a 'real' man...again. A collection of rants, ramblings, and musings about the whole "A.I." phenomenon.
1. You'll Never Want a 'Real' Man Again

+J.M.J.+

"Once You've Had Mecha…" 

by "Matrix Refugee"

**Author's note:**

The "Orga having unusual assignation with Gigolo Joe" sort of "A.I." fanfiction may be slightly done to death (Is that possible…??), but after I penned (keyboarded?) the "Zenon Eyes" triptych, I just had to share, somewhat in essay form, the dang deliciously embarrassing dream that started it all. Again, I dedicate this to Laurie E. Smith, who is increasingly becoming my "A.I." fanfiction mentor, to fom4life, thanks for loaning me the VHS when it came out; and to "Political John", for kidding me about this one. This is to "Zenon Eyes" what Brian Aldiss's "Supertoys Last all Summer Long" is to "A.I."

**Disclaimer:**

I don't own "A.I" or the character of Joe (certainly NOT the Mecha!), which are the property of DreamWorks SKG, the late Stanley Kubrick, of Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, et al.

This won't make much bloody sense to you unless I start by saying I'm a virgin. The most I've ever done is cuddle with a good friend of mine. I've never even been kissed on the mouth, and I'm, as of this keyboarding, a few days shy of twenty-five years old; must be a record for this age.

But in my case,  "virgin" does not mean "prude". That's red blood flowing my veins and there's plenty of testosterone in that blood. I get itchy thighs like everyone else, usually right around the fertile days of my cycle, of course, and the chance for a quick one has offered itself on more than one occasion. The most exasperating (and amusing) incident occurred when I was working in a grocery store bakery and one of the clerks used to pest me as a scrim for trying to get around me, but he had dated and ditched every girl in the store except me (every time you saw this guy, he had a new heartthrob; I was once tempted to ask him what his hourly rate was!) and since I was still recovering from a really messy broken engagement, I was definitely NOT interested in letting some gigolo grocery clerk play snooker with my already bruised heart. In my loneliness, I went through the torments of hell trying keep myself from resorting to the consolations afforded by the hired attentions of some young man of the oldest profession. The fear of sinning all but vanished before my desperation, but the fear of disease and of simply getting caught in the act somehow, kept me from following through with it.

What's this got to do with the dream? I'm getting to it.

Fast-forward about eight months, post "A.I" vanishing from the theatres before I got a chance to see it then, post 9/11 and the flipwits pesting Steven Spielberg to erase the half-submerged Twin Towers from the video version, post me losing my job, but pre-DVD release. I'm standing in a parking lot with my crazy friend Mark and a few friends of his after going to the movies (I think it was _A Beautiful Mind._) before going to an Academy Awards party, when he starts dancing around. Nothing unusual there, he once sent my mother into gales of laughter when he did a "Snoopy" dance to "Who Let the Dogs Out?" on our driveway; at first I thought he was impersonating Gene Kelly in _Singin' in the Rain_, but I noticed something odd, even machinelike about his movements and he had this goofy blank look on his usually mischievous face.

"Why are you doing that?" I asked innocently enough (I really said those words!).

He stopped short, tilting his head at an odd angle, and in a seductive drawl utterly unlike his usual boyish squeak, he replied, "'I don't know; it's just what I do." In his normal voice, he added, "That's from 'A.I.', in case you're wondering."

I had gotten curious about the film before when I read the press releases and all the (mostly scathing) reviews, but his antics/impersonation got me even more curious and if I was impatient for the DVD release, this little teaser made me even more interested.

Fast-forward several weeks. When the DVD of "A.I." finally came out, my computer (I have a DVD-ROM on it, so I won't tie up my parents' VCR) had decided to lock up solid (No, it didn't try eating spinach!), so I had to send it in to Gateway for repairs, which obliged me to wait…and wait…But it's good to have generous friends like Mark: He bought a copy of the VHS and let me borrow it. But event then, it took me a while to finally sit down and watch it: I was starting a vocational evaluation, plus I was working hard writing/revising my current magnum opus "The Magdalen Man", so finding the time to watch it was a challenge.

But at length, I watched it. I was not disappointed. The critics can snarl over it, the uninitiated can sneer at it: this, to me, is science fiction cinema at its most cerebral and most heartfelt. Kubrick supplied the brains, Spielberg gave it a heart; Kubrick gave it a certain amount of hormones (simulated ones, if nothing else), but Spielberg tempered them into civility without beating them into submission. I wouldn't want this film any other way.

But from the moment Joe's (Jude Law's) fluorescent green eyes lit up the screen, I was really hooked. (To be fair, I think Haley Joel Osment is a great actor and a darn cute young man [There's no other term for him; he's too good an actor to be called a kid], but I don't usually admit to it for fear of being thought weird. I could get away with this if only I were half my age.) I mean mouth dropping, cheeks burning, heart pounding _hooked_! The perverse part of me wanted to be in Patricia's shoes. And being the good Catholic girl that I am, I had to withdraw part of my consciousness; but the hot pleasant little tingles in certain areas of my flesh kept reminding me of what I'm made of. 

Of course this only gave me more fodder for fanfictions, these crazy little distractions from my duty to write the Great American Catholic/Science Fiction Novel (GAC/SFN, pronounced "gack-sfin"), but even then I had trouble starting. But I knew I wanted to write something starring a certain green-eyed love machine (!).

Perhaps the reason why I got stuck starting had a lot to do with my own silly inhibitions. For starters, I am ("I WAS!") terrified of robots, and it has nothing to do with any _Matrix_-inspired rebelling against AI's. These strange metal mockeries of mankind have always given me the creeps, and it gets worse when they resemble us so much you could confuse the two. In that respect, I suppose I'm like Monica early on in the film. And secondly, I had a somewhat lengthy theological discussion via e-mail with another friend regarding the whole idea of having sex with robots (yes, a certain charming Mecha got involved, briefly); we'd come to the conclusion that it would basically amount to a form of masturbation.

I often get my best story/character ideas from dreams I've had. I must have been thinking about my fanfiction quandary as I fell asleep the Friday night after I watched "A.I."…

I dreamt I was, as I always do when I'm writing, reclining on my bed, reading over the notebooks of "The Magdalen Man", my answer to the GAC/SFN, which tells the life story of a struggling young actor in the early 21st century trying to make something of himself even when he falls flat on his face and who ends up having to pay his way through acting school by, in his words, "working as, shall we call it an escort?" I heard no other sound but the tacking of my alarm clock and the scratch of the pencil on the paper, drowning out the usual night noises. Inspiration had got hold of me so that I saw nothing but the lined paper in front of me.

Something pricked my awareness: movement, a presence, a low white noise like the drone of a computer CPU, only felt rather than heard. I did not look up; the urge was on me now, and I refused to let my usual difficulty blocking out external stimuli disturb me now that my creativity was red-hot.

"Your writings show excellence. And yet, you have a polite disregard for that age-old advice to young writers 'Write what you know'," said a gentle, ironical man's voice.

My ears turned outward. It seemed at first the critic in my head had moved outside my skull and decided to get funny by speaking in a British accent, so I did what I usually do with the critic: disarm it with humor.

"If that were the case, then only detectives could write murder mysteries, only former cowhands and gunslingers could write westerns, only former CIA agents could write spy thrillers, and the science fiction stories would get written only by aliens or robots—"

That's when I looked up….

Into a pair of green eyes nearly the color of the green LED on a computer power switch, eyes that looked at me sidewise over the top of my pad, half amused, half intent, with a touch of vacuousness underlying the expression.

_He _sat at my feet on the side of the bed. He leaned over and put his hand on my pad, pushing it into my lap. I let my gaze pull back and take it all in: the anthracite black hair slicked back so well it seemed all of a piece, the almost painfully beautiful, perfect, tapered face as exquisitely carved as the face of a Greek statue; the trim but sensuous lines of his body, tastefully visible under his close-cut garments. A shiver of fear and delight started in the nape of my neck and ran down my spine and along the trunk nerves of my arms and legs.

_Hey, Joe, whaddya know? _I thought. But I finally found my voice. "What are you doing in my bedroom?!" I demanded.

He glanced at the notebook under his hand and looked at me. "To guess from your writing, it would appear I am supposed to help you with your writing. You lack some crucial experiences."

I tugged the notebook out from under his hand and backed away from him until I felt the footboard dig into my lower back. "Thanks, but I don't need your help."

He smiled shrewdly. "I beg to differ with you…Renee, is it?"

"How did you find that out?"

"I saw your name on the byline of your manuscript."

I tried to tear my gaze from him. Looking at him made my eyes feel so good they were almost in pain. "Well, I beg to differ with you, too. I've had some experience; I was engaged to be married."

 He found my face and regarded me in silence for a moment. "And this experience brought you pain? There is a troubled look in your eyes."

"It wasn't the best experience, but I learned from it."

"What did you learn from this experience? To fear love? To fear loving?" There was compassion alongside the irony in his tone, his words a caress that brushed a scabbed wound, bringing pain, but bringing comfort.

"No, I just learned not to jump into things so quickly," I replied, hoping to put him off. More irony: the physical part of my nature disregarded with what reason was trying to tell me and prepared itself to receive. I could feel lubrication sensations along with the fire kindling down below; I've felt this only once before.

"But you are still experiencing the pain. Of loss? Of loneliness?"

"Yes," I admitted.

"Perhaps there is only one way to free you from the pain memories of these bad experiences. That way is to replace them with good experiences. As your old saying goes, 'A new love sends the old love flying out the window'."

He had to use one of the cardinal rules of medieval courtly love to get around me, didn't he? "I thought of that myself. I don't need any prompting," I replied. Anything to stall the inevitable, my reason argued, but my body objected.

"Then why do you deny yourself something you know your heart longs for?"

"Because…no one's reciprocated when I offered my heart to them, okay? I was down on my knees to one guy, offering him my heart, but he wouldn't even regard it."

He leaned in closer to me. "That may be another reason why I was sent here: so you could have someone to reciprocate to you longings, your loneliness, to dispel the pain that plagues your spirit."

I started saying "Please don't make love to me", but I bit my tongue on this.

Next thing I knew I had taken off my wire-rimmed glasses and set them aside with my pad on the crate I use for a bookcase/nightstand, and lifted my gaze to his. The blood pounded in my temples and I knew I was blushing. All over. Up to the roots of my hair and down my chest. He caressed my face with the outside of his fingers…so natural, so soft-skinned yet so firm…so _real_. I wondered if any man's hand would feel so wonderful.

I let out a little gasp, but it came out sounding like a sob.

"Let go of that feeling and you can escape it," he said.

I think I edged closer at that point. His hand ran down my face to my neck, then caressed my jaw-length hair, sending warm, tingling tendrils of delight through my scalp. I let go at that point: I started crying. He put his arms about me and drew me onto his knees, a gesture at once innocent and romantic. He tilted my face up to his and kissed away the teardrops on my face.

"This is what love feels like," he said, looking into my eyes when they had cleared. "This is what _real _love feels like. Consider yourself lucky and blessed that your first embrace will bring you no pain, only joy." He gently lowered me onto my back, leaning over me. "You deserve to experience this joy. You deserve…"

"You," I breathed as he leaned over me, covering me completely. I let my hands hold his head, my fingers sinking into his dense black hair, feeling, yes, the separate soft fibers that made up what had only looked so sleekly solid. I had little idea what to expect, but the hot, masculine scent that emanated from his perfect skin felt just right as it washed through my nasal passages, purging the phlegm that my allergies had deposited there.

The images and sensations start to fragment after this—maybe because my better nature would rather that they did. I remember his fingers working open the front of my button-down blouse and my embarrassment at my scrawniness and my acne-blotched skin. I'm twenty-five, but I have the bust of a twelve year old, despite my having hips worthy of Natalie Portman or Carrie-Anne Moss. I may have said as much to him, letting loose my embarrassment.

"Your imperfection only makes you more interesting," he replied, unfazed.

"But next to you I-I look awful; y-you-you're perfect!" I sputtered.

He laid a finger on my lips. "Then enjoy the perfection you can see and disregard that which you cannot see. To me, with me, you shall be perfect."

I recall a glimpse of his Adonis-like form backlit, freed of its garments, but everything fades after that.

I woke up to mid-spring early morning mist on my windowpane, myself shivering and alone under my blankets. I lay there at once blissfully saddened that the dream had ended and embarrassed at my own runaway imagination. Finally I had to jump out of bed and run to the washroom to douse myself with cold water.

Later that weekend I was out with Mark and some friends of his to see the new "Spiderman" movie. On the way back, Mark asked me, since I was the only one in the car with two x chromosomes (read: "female") what I thought about Tobey Maguire. I admitted he was darn cute beneath his mask, but that I was currently dead gone on a certain Jude Law character in a certain much-maligned android flick. I even made the mild blunder of admitting to having had the embarrassing dream.

"What kind of embarrassing dream?" asked Mark's friend John, who was sitting next to me in the back seat.

"The most embarrassing kind: a sexual one," I admitted, blushing all over.

"I bet that makes you want to go to sleep at night," John insinuated. I made some remark about the irony of that statement, since at the height of my loneliness sleeping was the last thing I wanted to do since it made me lonelier.

To this, Mark added a variation on his Joe impersonation. "'Once you've had Mecha, you'll never want a "real" man'," said in a velvety seductive tone, then jerking his head to the left and flicking on the CD player.

But in a strange turn of events since the dream I haven't had any clawing, screaming, suffocating nocturnal attacks of loneliness and longing. I've felt miniscule twinges that soon went away, but not what I felt before. Maybe the All Mighty let me have this dream to let me know that yes, there is hope, there is someone out there for me.

On that note, supposedly, whoever you are, there are four or five other people in the world who strongly resemble you in appearance. Now if I could just find one of the other three or four guys out there who happen to strongly resemble Jude Law!

But it doesn't end there. My heart is divided. At one in the same time, my better nature wants me to run to a convent and purge myself of these images; but the other half of my nature is murmuring, "Hey, Joe, whaddya know? You were right!"

**"DVD extra":**

Fans of Laurie E. Smith's "A.I." fansite may have read the transcript of the Warner Brothers' "A.I." Message Board thread entitled "Would You Test-Drive Gigolo Joe?" My answer follows:

Matrix Refugee

"E-mail address"

"Date and time, yadda, yadda, yadda"

Hoo boy! Now there's a TOUGH question. ;8^) I think this would happen: I'd hesitate, he'd use his charms and I'd give in; then, _post coitum triste_, in the words of the Roman poet, sadness follows on coupling: I'd be thinking "What did I just DO?!?!" I'm a committed virgin, but I'm no prude by any stretch of the imagination; sex and love are a big deal to me, especially because I haven't had any experiences to make my cynical or jaded. When I find the right guy and marry him, I won't have anyone to compare him to. But there is that lure of the forbidden which I constantly have to deal with.

Say I did have the opportunity. But there are the drawbacks. I doubt Joe's services come cheap: probably in the area of 250 to 300 Newbucks. And how to pull it off without getting caught?

The cheapest way might be to relocate to Rouge City and strike up a flirtatious friendship with said Mecha (I wrote about this kind of scenario in my fanfiction "Runnin' Loose on the Streets of Rouge City").

But in my case, maybe a better question is how far would I let myself go with the green-eyed beauty?

Snuggling on a cold, snowy morning (I live in New England).

Dancing the Argentinean tango (I bet this guy could out-tango even an Argentinean; and you wouldn't be able to slip a dime between us!).

Conversation, conversation, conversation (Finally I'd find someone who probably appreciates the finer things of art and literature as much as I do, but who probably won't act stuck up about it. A few words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning or Pablo Neruda or Gerald Stearns whispered in my ear are more likely to send me into orbit than anything else).

Lying in each other's arms in a sunlit meadow, just gazing into each other's faces, green eyes to dark brown ones, or just watching the clouds drift by overhead (What sort of subliminals are in this Enya song I'm listening to?! ;8^))

Some folk seem to read a lot of smutty stuff into Joe's persona, but he strikes me as being very innocent, even a little naïve in his own way (Could be that's why he and David hit it off so well, that and a simple case of opposites attracting). Takes one to spot one? In a way, it's the first time every time for him since he has to do a lot of heavy-duty self-adjusting to each customer to maximize her experience. Imagine how his processors would be scrabbling if he had to deal with a post-act reformer!

For that matter, I'd be the first to defend Joe against the Orga powers that be after Bevins frames him with the murder (Is it just my weird observation or did Spielberg lift this plot element from the early Richard Gere movie "American Gigolo"?). I'd even try to hide him, which would be one way to get him to yourself; now that I've said that, everyone will be making attempts on my life!

Trouble is all this talk is awakening stuff in my system that my higher nature would rather see held in check.

::Exit author, running, to take a COLD shower::

**Afterword:**

I hope this didn't sound too prudish in the end. Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm a jumble of at times highly paradoxical emotions, often very much at odds with each other. Especially when love is involved. Or lover-Mechas.

Literary Easter Egg:

I had previously titled this, by turns, "Help! Help! There's a Mecha in my Bed!" or "Confessions of a Writer Obsessed with a 'Washing Machine with a Heart of Gold'". The latter refers to Jude Law's own humorous self-description of the character. 


	2. …You’ll Do Anything to Get Close to Him

+J.M.J.+

TITLE: "Once You've had Mecha…"

Author: "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note: I suppose this is arguably a Mary Sue, but it's based on observations I've made about, well, certain aspects of the whole "A.I." phenomena, its fans, its critics, et al. I call it an "essay/fic".

WARNING: Shameless fantasizing ahead!

Chapter 2

…You'll Do Anything to Get Close to Him

It doesn't surprise me that about seventy-five to eighty percent of all "A.I." fanfictions have our friend Joe in 'em somewhere or other. He's gotta be the most popular character in the whole film; I even know a rather straight-laced Catholic gentleman who found our hunk of silicon the most charming thing about the whole film, and even he bewailed the fact that to all appearances Our Boy gets the short sharp end of the stick.

For that matter, Joe's story provokes the most questions. David's story gets told from start to finish, but Joe's story…Oh, the possibilities! What other amorous intrigues and ambuscades has he played a part in? What designer created this dark Apollo with the eyes of electric flame? What genius or angst led to the creation of this singular creature? …And what REALLY happens to him after he gets hauled out of sight by the tractor magnet? (Confession time: I stop the DVD after he gets yanked from our sight; I can't bear it after that) Such is the stuff of which fictions are made…

And thus I have been undertaking a great deal of, er, research in my effort to make my Joe fictions not only enjoyable but also accurate. I've arranged a sort of "standing order" with a certain tall, dark, handsome thing with eyes the color of the green type on the screen of an early 1980s home computer. Wednesday and Saturday night, you'll know whom I'm with, Saturday night the standing order is a MUST since—duuuhhhh—it's his busiest night. Sunday night is out since that night I'm usually typing till the wee hours of the morning, though it's his slowest night of the week, except for a few regulars. Monday night is his second slowest night, but I'm usually typing again (I write my fics during the week and type 'em of weekends). Tuesday picks up a bit, the working women who are his most frequent clients have recovered slightly from the shock of Monday morning. Wednesday is another dead night for him: no one has any money left. Thursday picks up, but not till later: grocery shopping comes first. Friday nights he's usually booked solid.

Of course I end up reworking my nightly schedule around his. I'm unemployed, but we have this agreement: bartering fanfictions for conversation and face-chewing (and the occasional cuddle when I'm really low).

Initially, I resorted to the highly risky (and adolescent) means of letting him into the privacy of my room late at night when my parents had gone to bed. This had some positives: I'm on the second floor while my parents' room is on the first floor at the opposite end of the house, so they're less likely to hear any suspicious sounds or voices (I also put the radio on cover all sounds). But there are the minuses: Because I'm on the second floor, I have to figure out ways to get him up the stairs without anyone spotting him. Fortunately, he moves very quietly and agilely, you'd never know he was there except for the barely audible vibration from his components, probably either an inbuilt talent, or a skill acquired after many times of tiptoeing around in places he really shouldn't be (like the hallways of someone's house when her parents are asleep!). He has a strict order from me: not a peep until we get into my room and the door is closed.

Once in a while, he gets mischievous; we'll be halfway up the stairs, when, in this little squeaky octave he says, "Peep!" I always keep my mouth shut until we get safely into my room, even when I just want to turn around and give him a tongue-lashing.

Once the door is shut:

Me (Turning to him): "Bad Mecha! No cuddle!"

Joe (head cocked on one side): "Why so?" (He's playing dumb, and nothing plays dumb like an artificial intelligence).

Me: "I TOLD you not a peep!"

He usually replies to this with a sad little boy look in his eyes and the most graceful outthrust of his lower lip; it's as cute and heart melting as it sounds. This gets to me in the worst way imaginable. Or he hangs his head and slumps his shoulders charmingly, admitting his guilt, but I always spot that little gleam in his eyes, where he thinks I can't see it.

But his mischief doesn't end there. I'll be jotting notes and whatnot as we're talking, when he'll decide he wants, in the words of the remixed Elvis Presley song that's all the rage now, "A little less conversation, a little more action". I'll get up for something and when I get back, he's stolen my pencil/dropped it down behind the headboard of the bed. Another time, he parked his cute posterior on my pad of paper and refused to budge. I tried slinking it out from under him, no simple task, even though he weighs only twenty pounds more than I do; he found some way to glue himself to it. and then as I'm trying to get my pad out from under he, he finds ways to complicate the matter, like tickling the back of my neck, which earns him a swat—none too playful—but which he returns playfully, which torches off a wrestling match.

In the middle of one of these, we both fell off the bed in each other's arms, me on top:

My dad (on the stairs outside my door): "What was that?"

Me (hand over Joe's mouth): "I fell off the bed."

Dad: "You okay?"

Me: "Yeah, I just knocked the wind out of myself." The stairs creak as dad goes down.

Joe: (who's been tickling my palm with the tip of his tongue) "Noo mogged muh mim utta ME" (You knocked the wind out of ME [?])

But then my dad started tearing out the front steps outside, which were falling to pieces and had bricks coming out of them, an absolute hazard. It got so that the green-eyed beauty was the only thing with enough balance to maneuver them, so I had to resort to more extreme measures to smuggle him in. I couldn't let him in the back door, since we'd have to pass right by the door to my parents' room, so I had to find some way to get him into the second floor without blowing our cover. Last thing I wanted to do was run into my dad, walking through the kitchen, as I'm leading through something that looks like a refugee from a 1930s movie musical done all in plastic.

I got a rope ladder and anchored it to my windowsill. As direct as this route was, even then we had near misses. I heard someone moving about in the living room below just as I started to drop the ladder down to Joe, and he was waiting right in the light cast from an unshaded window with a lamp in it. I don't think anyone saw him: next morning at breakfast, my mother didn't ask me later about any shadowy figures lurking below my window.

"fom4life" has kidded me about this: when he calls me on weekends to ask me I want to join him and his "movie crew", he often asks me, "You don't have any hot dates set with something named Joe do you?" I usually go along with him, "Yeah I do have a standing order, but maybe I can convince him to rebook it." The hard part is actually rebooking said date with said Mecha; either I can't get another slot that night, or he gets uppity about how I "threw [him] over for a mere Orga." But he manages to maintain his sense of superiority: "fom" isn't much for looks by comparison with someone/thing in particular, which is why I don't take the alternate tack of inviting said Mecha along for the ride. Can't have someone's ego enhancer topping out, he might blow a circuit.

Lady Neferankh, my friend on the Yahoo! Group "AI_Fanfiction" suggested that it might be better if I met up with the titanium sex god somewhere else, thus: no having to keep an open ear for anyone listening or watching. We've met regularly at a coffee shop around the corner from my house. But this carries its own set of perils.

When people find out you're seeing something like Joe, you get very different reactions. Some people automatically think this means you're, like, really gettin' it on with him and they either grin and hoot at you, or, worse yet, they turn up their nose at you. Some of the latter kind will try preaching at you about these "machines of iniquity", all the while Joe is looking at the interloper with an utterly innocent, wide-eyed look on his face, while he's sitting on the opposite side of the table from me.

Then you get the funny people who act like seeing someone with a lover-Mecha doesn't excite them. They look at you blandly and say things like, "Oh my, your boyfriend is a Mecha…some of my best friends are Mechas." And then there's the guy who's the idiot of our village, who's tried to grope me a couple of times and tries to talk me up on the bus (really); he sees us together and he gets really crude: "Wow, that's the weirdest lookin' guy I've ever seen you with. Is he queer?" To which I reply, "No, but next to him YOU look queer!"

In order to get a little privacy, we took to finding semi-secluded nooks in various places. Of course Joe suggested renting a motel room (he expects it only because it's his usual modus operendi), but I don't trust myself with that, and the nearest one is a fleabag that's been the site of a couple drug busts (really). The only place that's really worked is the old burying ground on the corner of my street, hence the scene in "One of THOSE…!" with Cecie and Joe getting cozy in the graveyard: Nothing more paradoxical than cuddling on a grave from the 1600s with someone who isn't biologically alive. Only trouble is that lately it's been a full moon, and Joe gets reeeally nervous when he sees the moon rising through the treetops. He's sure it's the You Know What coming to finish him off, so I have to keep reassuring him that the Flesh Fair never comes this far north, that there's a lot of restrictions on carnivals in these New England villages, thanks to some old laws from the Puritan days that are still on the books; and even if we did have some unwelcome company, they'd have to get past me first, and plus my house is just a mad dash away, AND…my dad has a lot of old junk cars in the yard. What better place to hide a Mecha than under a bunch of 1964 Ford Falcon fenders and doors and things?

More nonsense to come…


	3. …You Won’t Be Able to Quit

"Once You've Had Mecha…"

by "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note: Enough already! This is going too far! No more! No more! Quit! Stop! Cease! Desist! I mean it! (No, this is not me talking to a very ardent Joe, it's me talking to myself.)

Chapter 3

…You Won't Be Able to Quit (You Don't Want to, Either)!

What's the worst part of being an author of "A.I." fanfics, especially Joe fics?

Once you've read one, you can't stop reading 'em. Or writing 'em. You read all the Joe fictions there are (even the NC-17 ones. I'm usually a little leery of those even if I am overage: my fertile imagination does not need encouragement) and you go into withdrawal when you can't find more, which only encourages and inspires you to write more. It's a disease with me, but I couldn't be more happily infected.

I've found that the "A.I." crowd tends to be a kindler, gentler crowd than most fandoms I've dealt with. I tried hanging with the "_Matrix_" crowd, but my first effort, "Priorities", got some rather mean-spirited reviews. The "Touched by an Angel" flock can be at times a little too mushy for my tastes, and there isn't a heck of a lot of a fanfic following for "Law and Order", unfortunately.

I suppose there is no such thing as a "typical" fan of "A.I.", just as there really isn't a typical anything, but from the pattern I've seen from the folks who hang around on the "A.I." fanfiction mailing list (Hi, folks!), they seem to be a highly creative lot with at times sensitively cynical or cynically sensitive natures. They're often somewhat different from the "typical" quote-unquote normal people out there (who'd wanna be like them any way??), probably because the film has a lot to do with accepting your own differences. If I had to create "categories" of "A.I." fans, I'd have to class the majority as "David's Mommy (or Daddy) Wannabes" [Haley Joel fans] or "members of Joe's Coterie of Happy Customers" [Jude Law fans]. I have yet to determine which is the larger category; it's a little hard when you're in the thick of one class.

But I created the catchall phrase "Mecha-hugger" to define more precisely what we are; "'A.I' fan" has always struck me as being too bland, and for that matter, the "Star Trek" nuts have claimed the term "Trekkies", so what were we to call ourselves? "Mechies"? The film is really all about the saving power of love: family love, friendship, altruism, eros. David, Teddy and Joe each signify three of the different kinds of love C.S. Lewis defined in his book "The Four Loves" respectively: "Storge" (Love of the familiar and familial—"I just wanted Mommy to love me!"), "Philia" (friendship—"I'm sure you'll be good friends."), and Eros ('nuff said—"No two women are ever alike and after they've met me, no two women are ever the same!"). Even the Specialists, the super-evolved Mechas in the third act, discover "Agape" (charity) through discovering David. And the simplest gesture of love is the hug: I mean, who wouldn't want to give David a huge, comforting hug after Monica dumps him in the woods ("If you just love me, I'll be sooo real for you!")? And Teddy was built for nice little fuzzy hugs (I've never been too keen on teddy bears, but when Martin lugs the poor little fuzzball around by the ear, I wanted to whack Martin over the head and hug Teddy—"Are they torturing you, Teddy?"). And…and…and…ooh, we won't start about hugging Joe or one thing'll lead to another…("You deserve much better…you deserve…me.").

I've noticed Mecha-huggers tend toward a certain amount of sensitivity, not the mushy variety, but more of a sensitivity to suffering, which strikes me as delightfully odd. It is a Stanley Kubrick film, after all, and Kubrick was noted for his cerebralness. Spielberg really made this film his own that way, by injecting his sensitivity into the very fabric, the fiber of the story. As a for instance, Joe originally seems to have been intended to be a much nastier, more macho type; I ran across online what appears to be one of the early sketches for the storyboards of the Rouge City sequence: the original Joe looks a little too much like a tall version of Joel Grey as the saturnine Emcee in _Cabaret_ for my tastes. Thanks for re-optimizing our silicon hottie, Steve, or it might have been unbearable for those of us who like their men (and Mechas) sensitive. I discussed this with "fom4life", who somewhat teasingly shot back, "Well, I guess you have to be sensitive if you're in love with an inanimate object."

"Ow." 

This little jab stayed with me the rest of the week. It rankled there, just under my skin, still twinging me when Saturday night came, bringing my standing order.

I told him about the inanimate object remark. Joe listened with smoldering sympathy as he sat across form me on the foot of the bed, not the first time he's had to listen to some woman spilling her heart out, but this was one of the few times he'd heard anyone talk about suffering (however mildly) on account of him.

"So he deems my species inanimate objects?" he said coldly. He drew close to me and turned my face to his. "If that is so, then ask your friend if an inanimate object can do this?" he kissed me behind one ear. "Or this?" behind the other ear. "Ask him, and tell him that I said as much, to show me an inanimate object that can do…this?" on the mouth, wide open and leaning his weight against me until I tipped over across the mattress, half-smothered by his ardor, letting out stifled yelps of delight, objection and mirth, deep in my throat.

He released my face and started in on my neck.

"Hey, watch it! I'm not—ooh!—I'm not finished with the research," I objected.

"It seems milady doth protest too much," he countered, raising his lips far enough from my skin to speak. "What mean you by research? Is this not the research you sought?" all the while he gave me a look which by turns seemed to say, 'Are you daft, woman?' and 'I may be more intelligent than you.'

Maybe I was wrong about the sensitivity…

More shameless fantasizing to come…


	4. …You Won't See the World the Same Way…Ag...

+J.M.J.+

Once You've Had Mecha…

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I'm handing the mike over to David for a little while, not to say that Joe isn't lingering in the shadows. This chapter is for "Ermite", the most thought-provoking new "A.I." fic writer (glad to have your wonderfully philosophical fics with us to balance out all the lascivious Joe fics!).

Disclaimer:

See chapter one (Chapter 4 already, and I thought this would be a one shot deal)

Chapter 4: …You Won't See the World the Same Way…Again

One theme in the film that cropped up, or one way I've interpreted it is this: It's all about learning to accept your own differences and learning that you don't have to change who or what you are to be loved and be lovable. David learns the dark side of human love when Martin returns home; people are going to argue with me that jealousy is not a part of love, but if you don't know jealousy, how can you really know love? It's a perfectly normal and at times a good thing to want to have the person you love all to yourself. It's just what you do with that jealousy that can be dangerous (i.e. smashing your identical twin in the face with a table lamp). Henry is perfectly right in saying that if David knows how to love, it's logical that he knows how to hate, but David's hate starts out as something very innocent, child-like dislike of things. It isn't until Martin shows up that our little guy starts to learn a less innocent form of this emotion. And he also learns to dislike what he is from Monica's apparent setting him aside ("Mommy will love a real boy"). (She should have consulted some robo-psychologist to help David make the transition from being an only child to having a brother…but then we wouldn't have this story…)

I happen to have, like David and like the rest of us each in our own way to a greater or lesser degree, a few things that set me apart from the rest of Orgakind. My parents chose an alternate means of educating me, which was probably a wise course of action in the long run: when I was twelve, I was diagnosed with dyscalculia (severe difficulties with mathematics) and fine motor coordination problems which stemmed from a possible mild case of dyslexia. The diagnosis has since been changed to Asperger's Syndrome, which explains some of my at times "odd" behavior: a tendency toward being a happy loner, and toward having odd fixations on different subjects (in the past it's been humpbacked whales, Adelie penguins, opera, the King Arthur legends, etc.) almost to the exclusion of other, more practical things; with the sheer number of fanfics I've written based on one particular movie, I lead you to figure out my current fixation. To put it in a nutshell, AS is a clinical term for the absent-minded professor behavior; Dr. Hans Asperger, the Austrian pediatrician who first identified the behavioral pattern now named for him, called the three and four year old kids he worked with who manifested this condition his "little professors" since they were often incredibly smart, often far above average in their intellectual development, but they tended to be off in their own little intellectual orbit, not really connecting much with other people. It was probably just as well that I was home taught, since kids with Asperger's tend not to do well in traditional class settings: they're often labeled disruptive, not in the classic sense of being rough/throwing things, et. al., but in a diametric opposite sense: they're almost too smart. As an example, if they get called on to give an answer, they often come out with a big, long monologue on the topic. Often they get put in the class with the troublemakers, and since kids with Asperger's have a tendency toward being very sensitive and having a hard time defending themselves properly, they get into worse bad trouble—think of the kids by the pool poking at David…

I'm often tempted to compare Mecha behavior with the behavior of people with Asperger's Syndrome: they both often tend toward slightly impassive facial expressions, their voice tend to lack a little naturalness; and in his case David tends to fixate on the Blue Fairy (I suppose we can argue that Joe has a one-track mind as well, but for a much different reason, heh, heh, heh.)

To be utterly honest, it was David's story that drew me to this movie. I remember a week before the film premiered, reading an interview which Haley Joel had done, in which he described David's journey to come to terms with his nature, and the scenario reminded me of my own story, my own difficulties in accepting myself as I am. Like David wanting to be "real", I wanted to be like everyone else. The term "learning disability" felt like a stigma. At the age of eleven, I even endured the trials of the Flesh Fair when a 12 year old female twice my size and two other girls pinned me to a telephone pole and tried to bash my head in with a rock bigger than my head (I wonder now if my principle tormenter might not be Lord Johnson-Johnson's daughter: she looked like a young, female version of Brendan Gleeson, and she had the same last name as a certain Mecha-basher) because I was home-taught and because I was brainy.

I don't have to tell you, readers, that Joe's all-too-brief story has me distracted in the worst way possible. Besides my being hormonal, there's another, deeper reason for this: I'm afraid to admit that I'm very like David. When I took the "Which 'A.I.' character are You?" challenge (available through Laurie E. Smith's site "Clear and Haunting Visions"), it did not surprise me in the least that I got David. We're both innocent, inexperienced, vulnerable, sensitive, sweet-natured (well, I am when I'm not writing _Road to Perdition_ fanfics!), and we just want to be loved unconditionally, for who we are, not what we can do (I often get the feeling Joe wants that sort of treatment as well). I've had a lot of kids poking cake servers at me/Flesh Fair goons after me: crass employers, snitty co-workers, patronizing people who think that what I've got can be cured through sheer will power alone. I'm still looking for a strong hand to grab onto when I feel threatened (Hey, Joe, where'd yah go?). I've dealt with professionals who were just as NON-helpful as Dr. Hobby (my first therapist: at the risk of sounding like I'm assassinating her character, she was a total dud and my sessions with her left me more screwed up than I was). But I lucked out and found the Specialist who can help me come to terms with what I am (Judy, my current therapist; if you're reading this, THANKS!).

But calling David's story a parable of mine is never that simple. I think we're all like David, we're all looking for love and going in the wrong direction as we look for it, but as soon as we realize that we can love and be loved as who we are, right now, we'll all be much happier. We all have an inner David who needs to be let out to play a little more often. Granted, this step makes us more vulnerable, but it is this vulnerability that makes us better lovers, just as Joe becomes a better creature, a better lover even, when he makes David's quest his own journey instead of continuing his own flight for safety. On that note, it is always two classes of people who are the most vulnerable: the very innocent and the very wicked, who end up being destroyed by the powers that be who think they know right from wrong, but who can't see the moral forest for the legal trees.

Looking for love in all the wrong places…David looking for the Blue Fairy, Hobby seeking to recreate his lost son, Henry bringing David home to Monica as a means to tide her over in case the worst should happen to Martin, Patricia looking for solace in Joe's arms: I can't help noting the irony in Joe's line to her "You deserve much better in your life". The quest for love can bring us to some weird places, but wherever it takes us, we are better for having made the journey. Like the title of one of my favorite fanfics on here, "Love Makes You Real".

I have not been the same person since I saw this movie. As of this writing, I've watched it seven times. I plan to make it a monthly ritual. Each time I watch it, I notice something I didn't notice before, which is what Spielberg said he set out to do, according to one recent interview. And each time I watch it, I realize just how much like David I am, how I've chased after the Blue Fairy in my own way, thinking I could change what I thought was wrong with myself. I realized, after the first time I watched "A.I.", that if David could have had his wish come true, if he could have become a "real" boy, that would have lost the very thing that made him "special and unique". And I realized that, if there was a magic bullet that could take away my quirks, that it would destroy one of the things that has made me who I am and in that case, it might make it impossible for me to love and be loved as I have learned how: to be able to see past a person's flaws and see them as they really are. I just hope I can find someone who, like Joe, can see me as an attractive individual, regardless of my quirks

More musings someday…


	5. You'll Sometimes Wish You'd Never Met Hi...

+J.M.J.+  
  
Once You've Had Mecha…  
  
By "Matrix Refugee"  
  
Author's Note:  
More musings to veil the shameless fantasizing! I was feeling low, so I had to write this, get my feelings out. A little sad, but it gets better.   
  
Disclaimer:  
See chapter one   
  
Chapter Five  
...You'll Occasionally Wish You Never Met Him  
  
When you really stop to think about Our Boy, you realize what a shocking creature he really is, every bit of a philosophical shock as he is a shock to the senses (in all senses).  
  
Even as, in my musings and dreams, I lean my head on his shoulder as he holds me close, I realize that there's something gravely amiss even in this moment of perfection. I've been thrown over by guys: one guy turned me down just because I was taller than him by an inch, while another guy told me to my face that he was looking for a sophisticated woman. There's something terribly amiss in a world where a mere, albeit beautiful machine can do more to please a woman and raise her sense of self-worth than a man has. Maybe the men who've thrown me over need to be on the receiving end of that kind of rejection. But there again, the guys who are that selfish might not take any notice if I did.  
  
But now I came to the realization that, in a sense, I was throwing over men of my own species in favor of a guy who is not. I tried to tell myself where else was I going to find someone who could accept me unconditionally, who would accept my at-times emotional neediness and would be more than willing to cuddle me back to functionality after I've had a melt-down. But the ugly truth reared it's head: it's just his programming. It's just what he does.  
  
I felt tears in my eyes when this thought presented itself to me, even as I lay nestled in Joe's arms, just cuddling with him.  
  
He must have sensed something, detected some change in my breathing or some chemical change in the androgens exuded from my skin. He propped himself up on his elbow and looked me in the eye. I turned my face to hide the tears.  
  
What troubles you?" he asked, innocently. "You did not seem troubled before, or has something surfaced that you had hoped to hide?" He touched my cheek with one fingertip, lifting it away, a tear resting there like a clear pearl. "I've found a tear."  
  
"I can't say," I said.  
  
He looked into my eyes, something like concern there, or was it just his programmed response. "Was someone unkind to you?" he asked. "You know I can soothe your sorrow."  
  
"I can't tell you about it." I honestly wanted to push him away and put some distance between us, but somehow I couldn't.  
  
"You know that I cannot judge you for your sadness, nor may I laugh at what disturbs your spirit. I can calm the waters of your soul."  
  
He was tempting me, but the realization was setting in. "I know you can't."  
  
"Was it something that I said?" he asked.  
  
I reached up and stroked his soft cheek, almost as soft as my own. "Joe, I don't know how to say this...I love having you around, having you here, just cuddling...but I need more."  
  
He smiled, lowering his eyelids seductively. "Much as you protested otherwise, once was not enough." He took my hand by the wrist and started guiding it toward the neck of his shirt.  
  
I withdrew my hand. "Joe, it's not that...*That's* the last thing I need right now." He cocked his head, puzzled. "That's just the problem."  
  
He looked at me utterly baffled. "How could that be the problem? You yourself have said that what we have here is beautiful."  
  
"I don't know how to say this, but I need to move on. You can't belong to me, and I can't belong to you. I have to find one of my own kind."  
  
He drew back from me, sitting beside me on the floor, his legs folded under him. "I understand. This has happened to me once or twice before by other customers, and I must respect it."  
  
I sat up, facing him. "That's just it." I put my hand on his knee. "I don't want to let you go, either."  
  
Joe's eyes went blank, utterly baffled. I could almost hear his logic processors whirring madly, trying to make sense of what I had just said. "Then you mean to say, you want me and yet you do not want me?" He paused. "How can you desire two things which contradict each other?"  
  
"That's just the way with Orga brains: our feelings can screw us up. I envy you for not really having emotions: you won't ever have to get tied up in knots the way I am right now."  
  
He gave me a smile then. "But it is that which draws me toward your kind, this strangeness only makes you all the more attractive. You only want a sympathetic hand and ear to soothe you and assuage your loneliness."  
  
"But that's just it," I said, laying my cards on the table. "I'm really just fooling myself when I keep going back to you. You make me feel great inside, but there's nothing behind it. I can't return the favor, not the way I can with..."  
  
"With a 'real' man?" he asked. I hoped I only imagined that cool note in his husky voice.  
  
"Don't misunderstand me," I said. "I'll always treasure what we had."  
  
He looked at me almost like a liitle boy after a scolding. "Is it over then?"  
  
"I don't want it to end, but I realize what you are. What you do for me, it's all just your programming, your responses to what I say and how I act."  
  
"But does it not comfort you?" he asked, clearly trying to forestall the inevitable.  
  
"It does. But I feel like I'm being dishonest with myself, like I'm fooling myself. We can't love each other the way we should. You can't love me the way I need because you don't know how, and I can't love you the right way because..."  
  
"Because I am not real," he concluded.  
  
He seemed so disappointed that I had to do something to soften the blow, but I knew it came too late. "Joe, don't think I don't like you any more or that I hate you."  
  
"I understand," he said. "As I said, this has happened before, and I must respect your wishes." He got up and reached for his jacket, draped across my chair, and pulled it on slowly.  
  
"Joe, I'm not throwing you out," I said. "I'm only trying to be completely honest with you."  
  
He nodded almost sagely. "It is understood: you require time and space in which to decide what you truly desire." He strode to the door, opened it and started to step through, but he paused on the threshold and turned to me. "But perhaps when you have given this the consideration it requires, you will decide in my favor, which....I assure you...will only be to your benefit."  
  
With that, he stepped through, out into the darkness of the hallway, quietly pulling the door shut behind him.  
  
Only then, I bent my head and cried. I realized I'd probably ruined something beautiful. wasn't perfect good enough for me? I wished I had never met him. Because of him, I felt marked for life. "You'll never want a 'real' man...again" is more than just advertising copy. and now he would never return. Served me right if he avoided me from then on.  
  
I avoided Joe out of embarassment after that. To anyone who asked me if I was still seeing "that Mecha", I claimed I had finally come to my senses and I was turning over a new leaf. But I was fooling everybody including myself. Joe might not be real, but man, he left an awful hole now that I'd turned him out of my life.  
  
I moved on to another guy, an Orga, a 1930s era reporter and news photographer thirteen years my senior, a cold-eyed, icy-hearted cuss with bad teeth and untrimmed nails stained from working with photographic developing chemicals (translation: I saw the film *Road to Perdition* and the perverse part of me devleoped a strange crush on Jude's sinister character in it. Just to let you know, I don't always develop crushes on his characters: I actually detested the whiny, self-pitying albeit genetically perfect character he plyed in the sci-fi drama *Gattaca*: it was like listening to myself.). The one wild dream I had involving him bordered on the nightmarish. All I'm gonna say about the marginally romantic interlude with "The Reporter", in the back seat of his Model a Ford, is thatr when I woke up from that dream, I got up immediately to check and see if I really had the marks of his nails on the small of my back and a dent in the back of my head where I'd half-brained myself on a door handle.  
  
If I ever needed Joe, if only to dispell that goon from the shadows of my mind and get me back to my senses, I needed hims like a plant needs water.  
  
I spotted Joe one evening outside the coffee shop where we used to meet. He looked my way with a smile, but he seemed reticent, as if he were deliberately holding back, teasing me even.  
  
I approached him. "Hey, Joe, whaddya know?" I asked.  
  
His smiled grew warmer. "So the prodigal returns. Did you ever find the 'real' man whom you could love properly?" he asked, part gently, part teasingly, even a little cynically.  
  
"Well, I found an Orga, but he wasn't half as good to me as you've been," I said. "He was more machine-like than you."  
  
"So you came back to me, seeking for a soothing hand?" he asked.  
  
"Yes...if you'll have me back," I said.  
  
He took my hands in both of his, pulling me close to him. "You know I can never refuse you: They made me only too willing to soothe you."  
  
I lifted my face up to his. "Just kiss me."  
  
He pressed his face to mine, kissing me lightly, almost tentatively even teasingly, testing the waters and witholding the full glory. He released my lips; inhibitions shorted out, I moved in, lips parted, letting him probe in deeper, despite the sniffs and harrumphs of the passersby. I was in my right mind again. Joe had charmed me, I had reached out to him; and all was right with the world.  
  
  
More, someday.... 


	6. You won't stop thinking about him

TITLE: "Once You've Had Mecha..."  
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"  
RATING: PG-13  
ARCHIVE: Yes (I'll be adding the other chapters here as soon as I finish with "The Eyes Have It"  
FEEDBACK: Please, please, please, please  
SUMMARY: More ramblings and ravings over Eros in Silicon  
DISCLAIMER: Alas, I don't own Joe's license, which belongs to Steve and Stan, et al. Darn.  
  
NOTES: This was an entry from my dream diary, but I elaborated on it. Will I ever quit? Not until I let go of the green-eyed beauty.  
I get obsessive with some things. "It's just what I do." As of this writing, I have watched "A.I." ten times, and I'm planning on my eleventh viewing sometime soon. This is nothing, really. I know of one person online who has seen it twenty times. So I'm only halfway behind them. Thank God for DVDs, so I won't be tying up my parent's VCR; that's why I opted for a DVD player on my computer when I bought it. I've also had a mild problem with the soundtrack CD getting "stuck" in the CD player.  
  
More than just that one time, Joe has capered through the landscape of my dreams. Once, it seemed I followed him along the streets of Rouge City, he eluding me playfully, I pursuing him in earnest through the neon-lit jungle. He vanished into the crowds of Orgas and Mechas, passersby and freaks, only to reappear alone on a street corner, posed so the light fell on him. But when I approached him, he only winked at me and bounded away down an alley.  
  
When I finally caught up with him, I found him posed against a lamppost, arms akimbo, smiling at me almost mockingly. I stepped closer, reaching out to him.  
  
His smile warmed to its usual gently smoldering seduction. Lowering his eyelids, he said, "You found me." When he raised them and looked at me directly, his eyes had gone from green to violet, a gentler shade, yet no less dramatic.  
  
I hate anaylzing dreams; it's a little like taking apart a butterfly and laying out the pieces on cardboard with little labels. The child in me would rather that I just enjoyed my dreams and didn't dissect them. But dreams are messages from the subconscious and the unconscious, told in a code od symbols that must be deciphered. Some images have purely personal meanings peculiar to each person, but many are often archetypes after the manner of Jung.  
  
Joe is, by far, the Jungian Trickster par excellance. Tricksters are, like Joe, attractive, charming, sexy and cynical, often endowed with shape-shifting abilities: the Norse fire god Loki, for instance, often appears in the myths, disguised as an old woman or a horse among other things; Joe can change his hair and eye color (a concept proposed by Jude Law himself; thanks for taking him up on it, Steve!) to attract or please a customer. They're likeable (I know some guys--who mind you, are straight--who think Joe was the coolest character in the film), witty, but unreliable (Joe briefly getting distracted by the woman outside the chapel in Rouge City). Expect to see the silicon hottie mentioned in screenwriting books that discuss the Jungian archetypes (I've already seen "A.I." mentioned in a screenwriting book geared for teens).  
  
But Joe is more than that: he starts as a Trickster and develops into David's Mentor, the wise man who guides the hero on at least part of his journey, sharing his wisdom and helping the hero find what he needs to know to complete his journey (I suppose Dr. Know is arguably also a Trickster turned Mentor, but it's not as well-developed). He helps David find out where the Blue Fairy can be found, but he also warns David of the sad reality of Orga-Mecha relations.  
  
Besides the fact that Joe is the perfect lover (at least in a carnal sense, I've yet to unravel the moral and philosophical snarls), what is it that draws me to him? Sexual dreams tend to mean something more than you've got the hots for someone. It usually means that you want to connet with something in yourself that you see reflected in your partner in the dream.  
  
Perhaps it's a simple case of my wishing I were more flexible, the way Our Boy is. He has the wherewithal to be all things to all people: the tender devotee, the dark gentleman, the charming admirer, the sensuous youth; I don't doubt that he could be an aggressive partner or even a bit of a wild man. My standards being what they are, I'm not about to put myself out of course: I just wish I could respond to people better and that I wasn't quite so rigid and inflexible. But in order to be a true lover, one has to make oneself vulnerable to a certain degree, something I have trouble with. Because I've been emotionally wounded by a loved one, I struggle with always having to be in control of a situation, and this is what has made it the most difficult for me to find a new love: The opening of one soul to another. I don't doubt that something in Joe is curious about intimacy. If he could transcend his programming, he could truly make himself vulnerable in a good way. Too bad something like him doesn't exist yet: we'd be great for each other.  
More someday.... 


End file.
